


Hitherto Confined

by methylviolet10b



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Angst, Death References, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-20
Updated: 2012-10-20
Packaged: 2017-11-16 15:42:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,531
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/541116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/methylviolet10b/pseuds/methylviolet10b
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Watson is visited by a terrifying spectre.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hitherto Confined

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from canon. Written for the following prompt:
> 
> PROMPT: The Supernatural  
> Requirements: Whether your supernatural (ie. otherworldly or beyond-worldly) experience proves to be man-created or simply imaginary, or you go the route of yes-ghosts/demons/vampires/freakythingsthatgobumpinthenight-do-exist, you must make the experience sufficiently terrifying. Pull out all the stops on those spooky old organs and try your best to creep your fellow authors (and poor Watson by default) out of their flat-footed-on-the-ground status.

 

 

Watson wasn’t sure if he’d nodded off for a few seconds, or if his exhausted, grief-torn mind had just simply stopped processing for a moment. When his head jerked up out of its half-nod, Holmes’ ghost was standing there again, just out of arm’s reach. The pale, bloodied figure stared at him solemnly, the walls of the village inn plainly visible through his insubstantial form.

Pain, guilt, and horror lanced through him. It was the same figure he’d seen for the first time two – or was it three? – days ago. He’d thought it an hallucination that first time, a waking phantom of his imagination brought on by fear and worry and the memory of seeing Holmes’ gore-stained Mackintosh in the gnarled hands of the game-keeper just hours before. Holmes could not be _dead_ , whatever the village police thought. Hurt, possibly – probably – almost certainly, perhaps, but not dead. He would find him, find Holmes and bring him safely back to the inn, give him whatever care or treatment he needed.

Except, of course, he hadn’t. Hadn’t found Holmes. Hadn’t found a trace of him, for all his frantic searching, not anywhere on the wild, trackless, barely-populated expanse of this thrice-damned corner of England. And he kept seeing Holmes’ ghost. Always the same pale, insubstantial figure of his friend, blood streaking the familiar features, always staring at him with solemn, hollow eyes.

Reproachful eyes? Perhaps even accusing?

Well, why not? After all, it was Watson’s own infirmity that had kept him from accompanying Holmes the morning he’d disappeared. _Damn_ his old wounds, aching in the damp, and Holmes’ consideration of the same. Holmes had told him to remain by the fire and wait for him while he followed up on a line of inquiry. And he’d _agreed_ , even been _relieved_. He had let a little discomfort keep him from Holmes’ side.

And now Holmes was – he was – and Watson would be forever haunted, forever damned, by guilt and shame if nothing else, actual ghost or not.

The vision of Holmes’ ghost wavered, blurred, as Watson’s eyes filled with tears. Words welled up within him, his despair demanding utterance at long last. “Oh, God,” he choked out, his voice almost unrecognizable to his own ears, raw and torn with sorrow and exhaustion. “Holmes _._ I’ve tried, but I can’t find you. I failed you. I -” His voice broke entirely, and tears burned tracks down his cheeks. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stop them, then wrenched them back open, afraid that Holmes’ ghost would be gone as it had always vanished before, between one blink of his eyes and the next.

Every hair on Watson’s body stood on end. Holmes’ transparent face hovered before him. The lips did not move, the expression did not change, and yet…

_Watson. Come._

A massive shudder wracked Watson’s frame, a soul-deep tremor that shook him to the very core of his consciousness. The room swam, nausea churned in his belly, and for a dreadful second, Watson felt himself on the verge of fainting. By the time he regained control over his body, Holmes’ ghost had retreated to the door.

It was madness. It was no more than he deserved. Watson snatched up his doctor’s bag and his coat and hurtled himself after the vague, retreating figure, heedless of his tear-stained cheeks and the wildness in his eyes.

An interminable, indeterminate time later, Watson was in the wilderness, his only companions the sturdy mule he’d hired the day Holmes vanished, his terrified, frantic thoughts, and an occasional flicker of _something_ (someone?) fading in and out ahead of him.

If not for the sudden commotion of the horses in the stable, Watson very much doubted if the stable-hand would have allowed him to leave. From the man’s horrified reaction, Watson could guess what he looked like. He might very well be mad, or hallucinating, or both. Certainly he was not in his right mind. He could very well be going to his own death, Watson knew.

Yet he had heard his friend’s voice, those familiar tones summoning him exactly has they had done hundreds of times before.

He could no more resist that call now than he ever had.

Out on Afghanistan’s plains he had witnessed a few men, driven mad by grief or terror, claim to hear the voices or see the forms of lost comrades. Sometimes both.

Some of those fellows had followed their visions, despite all that could be done to try and restrain them. Watson remembered one of his patients, a captain, dragging himself halfway out of the medical tent, claiming to hear his subaltern calling for him – despite that subaltern’s having been found dead three days earlier, and despite the captain’s own torn, mangled leg. They’d had to tie him to his bed to keep him from trying again.

He’d died anyway.

Very few of those who did manage to follow their ghosts had ever returned. The Afghanis spoke of afrits, evil spirits who lured away the living. His own upbringing included many stories of ghosts and ghouls. While lying ill and nearly dead of fever, he himself had seen a menacing, dark figure lurking nearby – a figure invisible to everyone else but one of his attendants, a Scotsman. A Scotsman who had sworn, gone very pale, and then drawn a protective cross over himself – and then over Watson.

The figure had vanished. An hallucination, Watson had thought then. Even so, he knew very few of those apparitions ever meant well to the living.

 _He did not care_.

Holmes had called him, and that was enough. Dead or alive, Holmes would never harm him. Watson simply would not believe otherwise. And if it was not Holmes…

He would take that chance.

He was well off of any trail now, utterly unsure of where he was. His mule stopped, and Watson realized he had come to the edge of a steep gully, one far too overgrown and slick for the mule to traverse. Almost certainly far too steep and slick for him to safely attempt.

A flicker of hazy movement near the bottom of the gully caught his eye. A wisp of mist? Holmes’ ghost?

Did it matter?

Watson dismounted, secured the mule’s reins to a nearby branch, and carefully started down.

*****

“It is extremely fortunate that the stable-hand sent the constable and the game-keeper after you,” Holmes said hoarsely. He was propped up in the best bed the inn had to offer with as many pillows as could be had. The fever had abated at last, but Watson did not like the sounds of lingering congestion in Holmes’ lungs, or the pallor that still marked Holmes’ face. The neat row of ten stitches, with which Watson had closed the bullet-graze, showed starkly against the narrow strip of shaved scalp. The rascal who had put that wound there was now in custody. Holmes had been able to name his attacker, the perpetrator of the crime that had brought them here in the first place. He had successfully eluded the man after being hit by the rifle-bullet. The gory Mackintosh had been enough to convince the man that he’d successfully killed the detective. Holmes had been less successful in escaping the effects of concussion, or in finding his way back to the inn. Exposure and blood loss had done the rest, weakening his system and leading to high fever.

“Not that I am not grateful for your finding me, of course,” Holmes continued, eyeing Watson where he sat near his bedside. “But really, my dear Watson, you ought to have had more care. You couldn’t possibly have carried me out of that ravine all by yourself.”

“I suppose not, Holmes,” Watson returned quietly.

Holmes gave him a sharp look, but when he spoke again, his tone was almost hesitant. “How _did_ you manage to find me?”

How indeed?

How to explain the visions that had tortured him? The visions that he had eventually followed?

How to describe to Holmes his own blood-stained, pale appearance – so very close to the one Watson had seen the ghost wear – or his delirious, fevered, continued calling of his name, so like the tones Watson had (hadn’t?) heard? The memory of which still sent shivers up his spine?

How to say any of this to the man who’d regularly scoffed at spiritualists, who firmly stated more than once that “I have hitherto confined my investigations to this world” and “the supernatural need not apply”?

How to avoid it? How to avoid answering the questions – the curiosity – of the foremost investigator in Britain? Lying to Holmes was laughable. Failing to answer his questions, almost as risible.

Watson took a deep breath and told as much of the truth as he could. “I cannot really explain it,” he told Holmes. “But it is not the first experience I have had in searching for you – or for your body.”

Holmes’ face tightened in pained sympathy. He reached out and weakly grasped Watson’s hand with his own. “Oh, Watson. My dear fellow.”

The grip was weak, but the fingers were warm, _alive_. Watson squeezed firmly in return. “You’re here. You’re alive. That’s all that really matters.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted July 25, 2011


End file.
